PARIS

Sunday 15th November

Well, what can we say.  Our beautiful city has been attacked again and 130 innocent people are murdered.  It is almost inconceivable that once again men with machine guns and explosives commit carnage in Paris.  And there are two major questions I am asking.

Why?  Well, part of the problem is that we see everything from our own point of view.  I share nothing with those who committed these murders but they would justify their actions because they perceive that there is a war being waged against Islam by the West.  And in our Media and fueled by right-wing propaganda there is a sustained attack on Muslims in our society.  The (short-lived) celebration of the assassination of ‘Jihadi John’, treated as some sort of cartoon villain is typical of this.  I have Muslim friends who are as horrified by their perversion of the tenets of Islam as we are but our illegal war in Iraq has simply provided Martyrs for these radicals groups.  And our continued bombing of Isis in both Iraq and Syria will not help.  Even if we destroy them completely they will simply go underground and re-emerge elsewhere.  France has an extra problem because of their history with Algeria, where resentments are still strong against their former colonial masters.  Of course, understanding still does not help us to stop these attacks or to change minds.  Maybe, just maybe, a complete re-evaluation of our relationship with the Middle East, which would include massive investment in Iraq and Syria, and a lot of education will eventually start to change the situation.

And of course how do we react?  If we create a complete Police State with people being searched at Railway Stations, Undergound Stations, All Public Venues and with police with machine-guns patrolling the streets we will lose more than we will gain. In Northern Island for a few years we had a policy of Internment; that is, imprisoning suspected sympathizers before they had committed any crimes.  And that was a complete failure, but there are already voices calling for this in France.  President Hollande is already calling this an Act of War.  Rhetoric maybe, but you cannot declare war on a huge section of your own citizens just because of their religion.  Of course the security forces should try to find out whoever may still be at large that was in any way involved with this atrocity, but we must be careful not to do the terrorists work for them.  In the long run, as in any war – unless you kill every single one of the enemy, you will have to one day sit down and talk to them.  Maybe we should try that now…before there are more attacks.

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